Small Form Factor System

'Wes

'Wes

'Wes

Soldato
Joined
28 Jun 2009
Posts
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Location
Łódź, Poland
Hi there,

I've grown towards acquiring a small form factor system instead of your usual desktop system, mainly to save space. I don't have much knowledge on the basis of small form factor systems, being what cases are ideal, what hardware is ideal, etc.

Any help, specifications, guidelines would be very much appreciated and my budget is £1000.

Thankyou in advance.

PS: Am i right in saying there isn't an AM3 Mini ITX as well as a Micro ATX motherboard?
 
You can get Matx Amd boards not many but they do exist, there are no Mini ITX boards for the 'New' Intel or AMD cpu's. and not likely to be either.

DFI LanParty JR 790GX-M3H5

Personally i run Matx intel x58.
 
SolarFlare said:
You can get Matx Amd boards not many but they do exist, there are no Mini ITX boards for the 'New' Intel or AMD cpu's. and not likely to be either.

DFI LanParty JR 790GX-M3H5

Personally i run Matx intel x58.
Click to expand...

There are quite a few m-itx AMD boards, though they only offer 1x speed 16x PCI-E where you can find them with one and normally only support upto AM2+. Again there are quite a few m-itx boards that offer support for various versions of core2duos with socket 775 support becoming more widely avaliable. Again keep an eye out for full 16x support on your PCI-E port. Commell make some of the best, but at a price.

As for AM3 and i7 support as SolarFlare said - this is unlikely any time soon. As great as it would be, its hard enough to get all the components needed on a m-atx board.

What you do with your grand is dependant on what you want your computer for and whether that includes screen, keyboard, mouse.
 
This would be my setup, if I had money to spend, though I'm going for a mix of gaming, with media centre.
The rest of money would be spent on nice monitor and probably get my diNovo Edge and MX Rev again

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 LGA775 'Yorkfield' 2.33GHz 4MB-cache (1333FSB) Processor - Retail + World In Conflict PC Game £119.99 (£104.34)
Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi Mini-ITX (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £113.99 (£99.12)
Silverstone Sugo SG05B Mini-ITX Case - Black (300w PSU) £89.99 (£78.25) £89.99
(£78.25)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4830 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £75.99 (£66.08)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000528AS) £62.99 (£54.77)
Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel (KHX6400D2LLK2/4G) £35.98 (£31.29)
Pioneer DVR-217FBK 22x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99 (£15.64)
Sub Total : £449.49
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.50
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £69.00
Total : £528.99

Other option if you want more gaming power would be to use a m-atx setup with something like a v351 or sugo and use something like a DF! P45T2RS which would allow you to have a crossfire setup if you want and you don't have to worry about power as you can fit any ATX2.2 PSU in.
 
Nope, just the base. Well, to be more descriptive, i was planning on having a small form factor case, but being able to fit in AM3, possibly 1366 sockets within the system. It's probably a lot to ask for considering the cooling and the possible size of PSU's, fans etc but it would be ideal if this could be possible.
 
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It will be used for gaming. I'm not bothered with which company i go for, i would go for Intel over AMD because i've used them before, but getting a decent i7 system for £1000 and a GPU like a GTX 285 isn't going to happen. I don't mind going dual-core but currently the AM3 cpu's are pretty much on par with Intel's 775 cpu's which is why i was curious whether they had AM3 motherboards out for the small form factor section.
 
How about the following :

captureihn.jpg
 
You don't need to go mad with the CPU for games, GPU is almost always the bottleneck unless you have a truly awful CPU. The premium for i7, DDR3 and an X58 board so isn't worth it.

Remember to bear cooling/noise in mind and the fact that good mATX cases that can provide fair cooling and the space for a GPU aren't really that small.

What resolution is your monitor?
 
20", but will upgrade in the future to 22" at some point, possibly 24" if i can open my wallet a bit more. I understand cards like the 285 and the 295 are recommended for people with high resolution monitors and that the 260 and the 275 would be more ideal in my case.

Yeah, i recently thought about whether there is any cases around in the small form factor category that can keep i7's and GPU's like the GTX 200 series relatively cool without encountering problems down the line.
 
I'm a quiet computing person and I have an E8500 and a GTX260 216 in a V350 with a quiet PSU and a lot of attention given to quiet cooling choice. Temps are more than fine (I was playing Crysis in the silly heat the other week) and noise isn't a bother outside of games even with the case fans all running undervolted. Same setup with a 9800GX2 didn't work, got too hot and crashed in some games and it was too loud for me. So you can't go too extreme but you can get away with a lot, and perhaps a lot more than me if you're less sensitive to noise.

Get a 24" monitor, you won't need the full £1000 for your PC and I can't recommend it enough, I've been using this size for four and a half years, it's lovely and if you can't run something at 1920x1200 then 1600x1200 is an option without scaling.
I played through Cryis and Warhead at 1920x1200 on High without AA without slowdown (no custom config which would help). CPU/GPU are at stock speeds.

Hope that gives you some thoughts.
 
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That's £450 on CPU/RAM/Mobo, I really don't think it's worth it, not if gaming is the most you do. If you want to spend a lot of money get a SSD, you'll get an appreciable difference with one of those.

You don't need 750w for a GTX260 (or any GPU really), a 400w Corsair is plenty.

The 2480 won't take full size cards as I recall, the Silverstone only takes 80mm fans so it'll be noisy.

You'll shortly (15th) be able to pre-order Windows 7 for £50, until that arrives you could use the release candidate.
 
Thanks, think i've got the gist of things.

I'll get the Midi-ATX cases, possibly the Coolermaster Storm Scout or the Lian-Li PC-P50B case.

I'll most likely get an Intel Core 2 Duo over an Intel Core 2 Quad for the fact that it saves money and Intel Core 2 Duo's won't be completely eliminated from gaming for a good year or so and still remain a good processor to use gaming wise.

Windows 7, mix thoughts on this operating system, but i'll get the best of both worlds and get the Vista Premium 64bit pack with the Windows 7 voucher.

I'll consider an SSD.
 
'Wes said:
Thanks, think i've got the gist of things.

I'll get the Midi-ATX cases, possibly the Coolermaster Storm Scout or the Lian-Li PC-P50B case.
Click to expand...

You've just quoted 2 cases that are mid-tower = ATX not micro ATX.

If you are going down the small, but still support ATX motherboard why not look at the Lian Li A05NB or A06B

Or if you really want m-atx look at something like the V-351 or antec Fusion

Forget all these 750W PSU's and look at at the 500-600 range. I've got a HX620 and will handle anything you through at it - Q6600, 3x8800GTX on 680i with 5 hdd's..
HX520 would do you for most things - its a lot cheaper, fantastic quality and modular.

Maybe look at the HD4870 1GB's they are around the same as the 260GTX's, but shorter (fits in most cases), though no one offers the same length warranty.

Win7 is pretty damn stable, been using it for sometime and haven't had problems, I would just stick with RC for now and forget Vista64.
 
Thought I'd through you your AM3 and a shake it up a little. On an after thought I think I would actually get a 260GTX instead of the HD4870 unless you went and got a T-rad for it. (Bare in mind the case aint in stock at OcUK)

READ COMMENT BELOW FOR CORRECTIONS

Tis time to get your overclocking pants on and have some fun. Might want some Noctua's to replace the current, but depends how quiet you like it.

niceg.jpg


+ OS cost (£50 for starter - god knows what you get for that, £100 for home, £150 for home Premium....)
 
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Great spec there Guardsmon, personally i wouldnt go down the i7 route over a Core 2 Duo as its not worth it at the moment, if you do want to down the small form factor route theres quite a few threads around at the moment with various specs based around the good old Zotac 9300ITX and the Silverstone Sugo.
 
Just noticed I selected an AM2+ CPU rather than AM3 (knew there was something I needed to check). Might be worth paying the extra £17 for the 955 AM3 (though I don't know how much better it would be once overclocked as the 940 clocks well.

And that brings the problem of memory - idiot. Should have paid more attention. DDR3 needed if you want AM3 (OCZ Reapers would be good.

Right that pushes my price up an additional £34.01 with the AM3 setup or saves £4 if change the mobo for Gigabyte AM2+ board which will clock just as well.

phew fixed before flamed
 
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